


will she come back

by larvitar



Series: summer depression [1]
Category: The Miseducation of Cameron Post - Emily M. Danforth
Genre: F/F, nothing explicit but i tagged anyway, only mentions of underage drinking and sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-02-23 21:25:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18710245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/larvitar/pseuds/larvitar
Summary: It’s easy to tell herself that she did the right thing, swayed Cameron off the unholy path, but even Coley knows she’s lying to herself.☆★☆cameron x coley ( i’m calling it coleron ) , one - shot , angst , POV of coley





	will she come back

**Author's Note:**

> starts right after the scene in the book where cameron leaves coley’s apartment after they have sex , title from the girl in red song , obviously  
> ( https://youtu.be/i0CGJwVZO18 )

After Cameron leaves, the room goes dead quiet with a suffocating silence. The silence is broken when Barry just says “Jesus.”

For some reason, it makes Coley want to cry, and she does, Ty still standing in the doorway to see Cam out.

Ty immediately shuts the door and goes over to Coley when she breaks down into a mess of sobs, his buddies standing around the apartment.

”What happened? Did that girl do something to you? Take advantage of you for bad mixed drinks?” Ty’s friends laugh a little at the last question, the air still somewhat stiff.

Coley knows what she should do- shut her mouth and tell her they just drank a little too much, so she’s a little hysterical. That would be what she should do, but the righteous thing to do was to tell them what Cam actually did with her. After all, after Cam and her had sex, it’s without a doubt that she’s no longer on the path of Christ. For a few moments, too, Coley lost the path of Christ. They sinned in that bedroom, and Cam drove her to sin.

Coley’s words come out in a mess, and she feels like a fool for blubbering to Ty about how “she took advantage of me” and “she lead me to sin” and all that bullshit.

By the end of it, Ty just puts a hand on her shoulder, and tells her, “Let’s go talk to Mom.”

☆★☆

They talk to their mom, who then talks to Pastor Crawford, spreading the story of sin until before Coley knows it, Cam is getting shipped off to the camp Reverend Rick came to talk to them about during Firepower. God’s Promise, it was called.

Coley doesn’t know how to feel after they ship Cameron off. She feels guilty, mostly. It eats away at her, and she lies on the bed in her apartment, the bed Cam took her virginity on. It makes Coley feel empty inside.

Unfortunately, her musings of guilt are interrupted by a brisk knock at the door. Whoever’s knocking means business, so Coley gets on her feet and opens the door as fast as she can (which admittedly, is not that fast).

Jamie’s standing in the doorway. “Jesus Taylor, what the fuck is your problem? I heard what you did, you fucking bitch.”

”I- what?” Coley barely has time to process what he’s saying. Coley never really felt anything towards Jamie, he was a good friend to Cam and they had a weird on-and-off thing for awhile, and he did have good weed, but that was as far as it went. Coley surely didn’t imagine him popping up at her apartment to confront her.

”You know what the fuck I’m talking about. Cam’s fucking stuck in that place for God knows how long because of you. Tell me something, Coley- did she really manipulate you to sin? Or did you do it yourself?”

The question stabs Coley in the gut and she swears she could be dreaming. “I-“ she starts, but Coley can’t answer before Jamie cuts her off.

”I didn’t come here to cuss you out, though. I wanted to give you these.” Jamie places a stack of Polaroids in Coley’s hand, all banded together with an old, orange hairtie.

”I got them before they confiscated them from Cam for being lesbian contraband, or whatever. They’re ones I figure she won’t need to be reminded of after she gets cured or whatever, otherwise I’d just keep them to myself.”

Jamie looks around awkwardly at the front door of the apartment, still not knowing what to do with himself. “So go crazy, or whatever. Hopefully I won’t see you later,” he says, and with that, Jamie slams the door, trudging down the hall in his beat up Adidas, the ones he’s had since the eighth grade. Coley knows because she can hear the *flop* of the broken sole against the hallway carpet. It had been broken for awhile, the backend of the sole hanging out lifelessly from the back of the shoe. No amount of glue, Duct Tape, or whatever else could fix it, it seemed. Or maybe Jamie just didn’t care that much.

Regardless, it left Coley with a stack of polaroids, Coley gently taking off the well-loved hairtie from the stack and looking at the first few.

The first few were from the late spring, some of the first ones being from a church picnic. These were ones that didn’t include her, before Cam met her. The polaroids from then were of Cam’s Aunt Ruth (or “Ruth” as she called her) and her boyfriend (fiancé?) Ray. They looked happy, less weathered than she did now, with Cameron’s circumstances wearing her down. There were a few of Jamie, then as Coley got deeper into the stack, she found the ones of her with Cam, full of summer magic, bright smiles, and love.

She found a few polaroids of her, by herself. If she wasn’t smiling in the photo, she was asleep. The photos looked so peaceful, a portal to an easier time, an easier way. It was Coley’s responsibility, though. She saved herself from a path of sin, and she had tried to help Cameron. She sighed, recollecting the polaroids and rebanding them as she put them in an empty drawer of her big, big, white dresser. Her mom had moved it out of the basement into her apartment, with Ty’s help, of course. She had barely touched it, feeling as if it was a relic she didn’t want to disturb, so putting the pictures in there was the best option.

After all, it’s true what they say- out of sight, out of mind.

☆★☆

After some convincing by Brett, Coley decided to write Cam a letter, on pretty pink paper that smelled like roses. It felt like such a depart from her usual aesthetic, raising cattle, up to her knees in the mud. Coley liked the paper because it made her think of if she lived a life in the city, being surrounded by so many people, always so many things to do. Part of her was glad she didn’t live that life though, because the city was polluted as hell.

She didn’t know what to write, at first, and the guilt ate at her. Coley wanted to spill out her feelings, apologize, say she missed her, she missed the way Cameron's skin felt on hers, and-

Those thoughts are all sin, she reminded herself. The God’s Promise place was going to read through it anyway, so she might as well write as direct as possible. At least she’d give Cam closure.

Coley had written about how Cam manipulated her, twisted her onto a dark, forlorn path of sin. It hurt to write it, but Coley wasn’t going to break down over this. This girl manipulated her to play out her sick scissors sisters fantasy. Cut, print, copy. Right?

She just used black ink, from a normal pen she’d had in her backpack, the pen’s ink gliding and flowing with her delicate cursive. It spiraled and swooshed with her lettering, the end result of her letter being a strongly-worded letter to Cameron of what she’d done to her, and Coley was satisfied with it. _Satisfied_ was the best word she could use. Nothing else fit in its place.

She got the address to God’s Promise from Pastor Crawford, who read the letter and “mhm”’d and nodded in all the right places. He told Coley he thought it would be a “good thing” for Cameron to see the “damage she’d wrought upon her friends and family with the power of her sin”. Coley just smiled at him, thanking him as she slid the letter in a white envelope, sealing it as she hastily wrote the address to God’s Promise as Pastor Crawford rattled it off. She left church to slip it in the blue drop box over near the dinky post office they had in Miles City, feeling accomplished, a knot, tightly wrapped, in her stomach. 

☆★☆

Cameron comes home for Christmas. She didn’t think she’d see the day, Cam showing up to church on Christmas Eve in her spiffy little uniform. She hadn’t responded to her letter, but then again, Coley didn’t think she was allowed. She doesn’t look at Cam, any urge to look at her being directed to look at the stained glass or something else equally monotonous. They depart after the Christmas services, filing out in silence, Coley silently hoping none of her family stole a look at Cameron Post- known sinner. Ray and Ruth’s wedding is today, and Coley wants nothing less than to be around for the number of Post family members and friends sitting pew by pew to see good ol’ Ruth get married to the nice church man Ray, with her orphan dyke of a niece making a guest appearance. Quite the motion picture.

Coley’s face remains stony as they pass by Cameron, Brett locking eyes with Cam for a split second, but Coley lightly jabbed him, and he faced back around. They exited the church, quiet as ever.

Brett leaned down to Coley’s ear, his voice a whisper. “I just didn’t want her to feel like a stranger.”

“She should,” Coley replies coldly. “She is in my world.”

☆★☆

Cameron goes missing. It’s right around June, the hot Montana summer just arriving in Miles City. Her and two other disciples from God’s Promise said they were going on a lengthy hike and then stop for a picnic, but here they were, nowhere to be found. Coley tries to process it, and her mind tells her it’s her fault, but she’s probably friends with the other disciples, so it’s fine. It’s fine.

The edge of the newspaper crinkles as Coley crumples it, trying to get the sight of Cameron Post in black and white ink out of her sight as she tried to finish reading the article. She stares at the words, none of them registering besides _Cameron_ and _homosexual_. They stare back at her, glaring and loud. She shakes, slamming the newspaper down on her patio table.

The guilt eats back at her. Of course it’s her fault, if she just shut up and minded her business it would’ve been fine. Classic Coley, always getting herself into things she shouldn’t. Her heart ached, for Cameron, for last summer, to be happy.

Coley messed up majorly, leaving the best thing that ever happened to her for dead. For all she knew, Cam could be dead, eaten by a bear, burned alive, murdered, God only knows, and it was all her fault, because she couldn’t drive herself from the thought of beautiful, disgusting sin. Coley Taylor fucked up.

Coley Taylor was fucked up.

☆★☆

**Author's Note:**

> shittiest people in life are the coley taylors , the perfect girls who are totally assholes to you . mostly one sided because a coley taylor broke my heart and i hate coley but she’s such an interesting character on god  
> also i hate how this ended but lol i needed to express my feelings about this book this shit fucking slaps  
> ☆★☆  
> torture me on tumblr krookodyke.tumblr.com


End file.
